Flying Insect Sequences

Following are some experiments using videos of flying insects to duplicate the
characteristics of composited images taken from Jose Escamilla's
"rod" videos.

These videos were taken with a Canon ES9000 8mm camcorder
forced to 1/60 second exposure. The amount of zoom used varies from about 10x
up to the camera's full 20x, depending on the distance to the background
trees. (This is because I was attempting to get a fairly dark background
across the full frame, not because of the distance to the bugs. The trees range
between 50 feet and 200 feet away, and the bugs ranged from about 2
feet away up to perhaps 20 feet or more.)

These pictures show remarkable similarity to
Jose Escamilla's "rod" videos.
Specifically, when successive images are composited into the same picture,
there is a distinctive correlation between the apparent "rod" size and the
displacement from one frame to the next: the "rod" always appears to be
moving two "rod" lengths per frame.
There are also several examples of the waving or "sinusoidal" patterns that can be
caused by blurred flapping wings (which makes "rods" appear to have multiple wings
or long undulating fins along their sides), and there is an example at the
bottom of the page of "paddle-like" wings, like those seen on some of
Escamilla's images.

Below, the left two pictures were composited from the same video of a flying bug:
The top picture was composited from the first field in a series of frames, and the bottom
picture was composited from the second field in each of those same frames.
Note that both show the same "bug/gap" pattern seen in most of
Escamilla's "rod" images, i.e. gaps between the "rods" that
are approximately the same length as the "rods." The picture on the right
shows all the fields composited into a single image, and the "rod" has become
a continuous streak. (The "rods" are slightly misaligned because of camera motion.)

These next two sets also show the results of compositing the first field from
each frame or the second field in each frame. In both, we again see the "two lengths
per frame" pattern, and again if all the fields were composited into a single image,
the "rods" would be continuous streaks.

So, when only one field from each video frame is used in the composite,
the result is a gap between each "rod" that is about the same length as the "rod."
(This appears to be the case in most of the images Escamilla originally posted on
roswellrods.com prior to 2000.)
When both fields are included, the result is a continuous streak (which is the
pattern seen in all of the images taken from the sample of
Escamilla's latest DVD).
Both of these patterns are simply because the camera is capturing 60 fields per second,
and the field exposure time is 1/60th second.
All of the "rod" images I have collected from around the Web
show one or the other of these two patterns.

For these remaining bug pictures, only one set of fields has been used,
but the "bug/gap" pattern is the same for the alternate sets of those fields
as well, and again, including all fields would produce a continuous streak.

Following are a few images taken with a JVC GR-DVL505 digital camcorder
with the exposure forced to 1/60 second.
Again, only one field from each frame has been used, but if all the fields
from all frames were composited, the "bug rods" would simply be continuous
motion-blurred streaks.

This picture was taken with a digital still camera by Shannon Story,
who now has a page on her photograpy site called
Hot Rods
(now on web.archive.org).
She was attempting to take a picture of some insects that had recently
appeared in her yard, but she immediately noticed the similarity between
these pictures and Escamilla's "rods" that she had seen on TV.

Shannon now has many "rod" pictures on her site, but she says this
is the one that convinced her she really was photographing flying bugs.
Many of the insects, which have now been identified as Tiphiidae
(Tiphiid Wasps), are seen resting on the leaves, while the one in the lower
right corner has transformed itself into a "rod" simply by flying.